Top Anime

  

i dont know what to do. is the manga better or is watching it better?

Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Writing credits – Ingmar Bergman

(1957)

The knight says: My indifference has shut me out. I live in a world of ghosts, a prisoner of dreams. I want God to put out his hand, show me his face, speak to me. I cry out to him in the dark but there is no-one there. This film is partly about the absence of God. Have you at times experienced the dark night of the soul, and how can we help others who are experiencing it now?

We’ve all gone through what the Knight in this film went through. In the Bible, plenty people were open with God the same way: Jacob, Elijah, David, Jeremiah and even Jesus. Rick Warren in his book The Purpose Driven Life points out how God doesn’t want us to be perfect; he wants us to be honest. I think as long as we encourage people to talk to God, we’re helping.

Roger Ebert wrote that “films are no longer concerned with the silence of God but the chattering of men? Is this a true or a superficial verdict? Quote examples to support either side of this argument.

I don’t agree with the dichotomy created by Roger Ebert. I would say that often God speaks in the silence and through the chattering of men; to be concerned with either or is to be concerned with both.

For example, in the film the Knight makes this monologue about God’s silence but as he chatters he points out that “I can’t silence the God within me.” In the Bible Elijah looks for God and finds him in a small still voice. One Jewish translation of that passage is – that God was in the silence.

Some Jewish teachers teach that the reason that God’s name “Yaweh” was unmentionable is because when putting the consonants together it only made the sound of breathing; in other words, God’s name is the sound breathing. So to say films are no longer concerned with the silence of God but the chattering of men shows an internal misunderstanding of God’s relationship to man.

What do we feel about the examples of religious ignorance portrayed, such as the flogging processions and the burning of the witch?

Bergman’s examples of Fanaticism and Atheism seem to be calling for balance between the two extremes. We shouldn’t be so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good, but we shouldn’t be so worldly that we miss the big picture and lose hope in a better day. In Paul Austin’s book, Bergman on Bergman, Ingmar Bergman talks about how the Knight seems more interested in whether the witch has really seen the devil, than in her physical sufferings. The Atheist is concerned with her suffering and gives her some water.

Ingmar says, “Its two sides of the same thing. To the fanatical believer physical… suffering is beside the point, compared with salvation.” (Austin, 117). Everything around the Knight is a game. “Jons, he’s a man of the here and now. He feels sympathy, hatred and scorn” (Austin, 117).

Facing the end of his own life and the general destruction of the plague, the knight spends some time with Joseph and Mary and their child and says “I will remember this hour of peace, the dusk, the bowl of wild strawberries, the bowl of milk, Joseph with his lute.” Saving this family from death becomes the knight’s last gesture of affirmation. How do we individually relate to this scene?

Joseph and Mary represent hope and when the Knight wishes to remember moments with them he’s attempting to remember to have hope. With death everywhere – this family unit is full of art and hope. Joseph is “a dreamer” (Austin, 116). We should never forget to sit and dream.

Why is this film considered a masterpiece of modern cinema?

Although the film is dealing with medieval times and the impending doom of plagues, the audience of the 50′s could relate because they were dealing with the threat of nuclear war. “The foreign press – not the ordinary press perhaps, but people who’ve written longer and more ambitious essays on it – say it’s a film about the present, that it’s apocalyptic, forebodes the nuclear catastrophe” (Austin, 117). Bergman says this film freed him from his own fear of death. In short, this film is about the fear of death which is a timeless issue we all struggle with.

http://parablestoday.blogspot.com/2010/01/seventh-seal.html

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chester_Branch